'Dada-messe' exhibit, performance comes to Texas State

“Dada-messe,” an exhibit and performance of Dada art, will run from Dec. 4-6 in the Mitte Honors Program Gallery and Coffeehouse, Lampasas Hall, at Texas State University-San Marcos.

The exhibit performances will take place from noon-1 p.m. on Dec. 6.

This semester, students investigated Dada art’s history and its renewed relevance in a Department of Art & Design seminar led by James Housefield, National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities and associate professor of the history of art. As a vehicle for their independent research and creative work, the team of 36 students in the class mounted a brief exhibit of their art.

Dada was an art movement that arose amidst the uncertainties of the first World War, quickly expanding to locations around the world. Both art and anti-art, the ideas of Dada transformed art’s history and led to many of the major tendencies in art of recent years. Marcel Duchamp, one of the key figures of international dada, was later dubbed the “artist of the century.” A urinal he transformed for exhibition in 1917, titled “Fountain,” was dubbed “the most influential art work of all time” in 2004 a poll of 500 art experts.